1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and apparatus for representing a group of images, especially in terms of colour, and for searching for and retrieving images.
2. Description of the Background
There are various known techniques for representing an image using visual features such as colour appearing in the image. For example, in one known technique, each pixel is assigned a colour value, and a colour histogram is derived by setting bins for a number of ranges of colour values, and counting the number of pixels in an image which have a colour value in each of the ranges. The colour histogram is then used as a representation of the image. In another known technique, one or more dominant colours in an image are identified, and the dominant colours are used to represent the image.